At last year's largely uneventful Napslo annual convention in Atlanta the talk at the bars was of a merry-go-round of underwriting execs in the E&S property space.
There was also much bemoaning of a soft market bloodbath that was prompting some carriers to consider significant retrenchment as margins bordered on the unacceptable.
As delegates head to San Diego this weekend for the newly christened Wholesale & Specialty Insurance Association (WSIA)'s 2017 Annual Marketplace, the spotlight will again fall on E&S property.
But with Irma currently projected to slam into Florida sometime on Sunday, the tone of the conversation will be very different.
A week ago underwriters were beginning to pick through a complicated Harvey loss in Texas that many believe will now amount to an insured industry hit of $20bn or higher.
There will be a significant E&S component of course, but much of the commercial flood loss is likely to affect the larger standard writers.
A direct hit on Florida in the vicinity of Miami is an altogether different scenario, however.
If the worst-case projections are right and a 1-in-100-year $100bn+ insured loss event comes to pass it will inevitably deliver a huge claims burden to the E&S property space.
While much attention will be on the resilience of a thinly capitalised homeowners' market heavily reliant on reinsurance, Florida's commercial residential market is dominated by E&S carriers, including those supporting the many MGAs that specialise in insuring wind-exposed assets.
The likes of Amrisc, Catalytic, FIU and Icat write on behalf of specialty carriers in the US domestic market and internationally, including Lloyd's.
Lloyd's - the biggest E&S writer, with a market share that increased on the back of double-digit top-line growth last year - would potentially have major exposure through its binder book.
The E&S property market is also a big writer of other wind-exposed commercial risks in the hospitality, builders' risk, real estate, manufacturing, healthcare and public entity segments.
That means underwriters down in California at WSIA will be nervously monitoring Irma's path and the potentially huge total insured values (TIVs) in its path.
But provided they are confident in their aggregations and reinsurance protection they will also be thinking about what the "big one" could mean for the market.
After all, the industry has been waiting for something to come along and change the huge imbalance of supply and demand in the primary and reinsurance sectors.
It has long been talking about what sized loss would send the pricing cycle back on an upwards trajectory, and the kind of impact being talked about with Irma could do just that.
And that's what the E&S market is there for. If outsized losses send standard carriers running away from coastal exposures, it is the very lifeblood of surplus lines underwriters to step in and provide solutions.
Of course, we at The Insurance Insider share all of your concerns about the human impact of catastrophe events on industry colleagues and the wider community.
For those attending WSIA, we wish you safe travels and hope to see you there.